RocknRolla - in cinemas now
Cor blimey guv’nor, apples and pears, Jacob’s Crackers, and other assorted foodstuffs, it’s Guy Ritchie inneet? Rocking in with his new picture, RocknRolla right, which is like a revisting of his familiar, bankable roots after a two exercises in epic failure.
No new territory is covered here, it’s very much Lock Stock by numbers, so if you’re expecting Shakespeare, then you’d be better off looking elsewhere. However, if you’re after a slick, cheeky mockney comedy thriller full of guns, geezers and Gerard Butler, then you could do worse. Calling RocknRolla a return to form would be pushing it, but it’s safe to say that it’s a country mile better than the overly ambitious and confusing Revolver, (not to mention that total guff-bubble Swept Away) and plenty of fun.
The film is typical Ritchie fare – intertwining strands, stolen MacGuffins, (in this case a ‘lucky painting’) vast sums of money, and an assorted cast of bad boys and girls out for revenge or slice of the pie, or a bit of both.
The assorted cast of RocknRolla consists of the aforementioned barrel-chested Gerard Butler, as Scottish hardcase One Two, Idris Elba (aka The Wire’s Stringer Bell) as Mumbles, One Two’s right hand man, and long serving and über profilic British thesp Tom Wilkinson as Lenny Cole, an ageing figurehead of the old London mob scene which is being eclipsed by the growing influence of the Russian mafia, represented by the football team owning property developer Uri Obomavich (not at all unlike Roman Abramovich, honest guv). Tony Kebbel, who played Joy Division manager Rob Gretton in Control, puts in an amusing turn as Johnny Quid, the junked-up shirtless eponymous rock star, and Thandie Newton plays the treacherous Stella, accountant to Obomavich, and some sort of love interest for One Two.
There’s unintentional laughs to be had during the opening scene where an estate agent says that London property prices are “going one way – up,” and over the weirdly cold love scene between Butler and Newton, which resembles a half-cocked attempt to reference the famous Pulp Fiction dance-off between Uma Thurman and John Travolta.
All in all though, it’s a fun, if not funny, comedy thriller that if anything, suffers from being overly long.
